Eulogy Given on the Passing of a Friend

We were Bobby and Robby to each other. First names of our childhood carried with us from the time we met as pre-teens until our last conversation on Bobby, I mean Bob's, recent 75th birthday.

It was my great fortune that my path kept intersecting with his through the various iterations of our lives. First at the golf club to which our parents belonged. Then in high school. He was a few years my senior so at that time he was mostly in my peripheral vision. Later when he returned from his brush with journalistic fame under the watchful gaze of Jack Anderson, I was Bob's real estate lawyer. Next, the Berkshires where we both resided part time and finally as my business Landlord for well over a decade. Fate and circumstance drawing us near. None of this was by design. Or maybe all of it was.

And the Bob I first met was the same as the person I spoke to while he was in the hospital room on his last birthday. Fiercely dedicated to the truth, to the people and causes he cared about most deeply, passionate and generous in spirit and deed. Forever grateful for the myriad benefits bestowed upon him. I always believed that by his example, Bob made me, made all those within his orbit who were paying attention, better people. A moral imperative, or at least a guidebook to what it meant to live a life with purpose..

At the office building, I was actually a subtenant in Bob's space. Each morning I would enter and make a left hand turn to get to my designated area. Bob would turn right and head to the opposite end (by way of footnote, our politics, if not our location, were 100 percent aligned). We could go days without bumping into each other. But if I wandered to Bob's office, or he to mine, I knew the next 40 minutes or so might well be filled with discussion of the state of everything important in his universe, from the latest political upheaval, to the most recent tales of his children, from opera and the current Broadway show he embraced, to the comings and goings in his business, from what was happening at our old school to memories of his parents. I was given a front row seat to Bob's world. And it was overflowing with interesting moments, with people and places Bob adored.

There was a plaque just inside the front door of the office setting forth duration of stay by those in the employ of this company. And the long commitment of so many was a testament to Bob. For he treated all those working there with respect, with kindness and dignity. Leading, as he always did, not by force but by quality.

On his last birthday, Bob and I spoke for a long time. He was well aware of the seriousness of his condition, having structured many decisions in his last years around this understanding. On this day, as on all others, he was both humorous and serious, looking at the world from 30,000 feet and from up close. He sent me a picture of the balloons that were there in celebration of three quarters a century of life. And of the school his dad had once attended that was located almost immediately touching the hospital. Even in the midst of another health scare he could see far beyond the confines of his illness and that room.

We may never be lucky enough to be in the presence of truly meaningful people, who live directed and important existences. Who show us how to comport ourselves, who demonstrate the best qualities that lie within us, who teach us the right way to go about our day, to go about our days. I have had the wonderful privilege to know such a person.

To know Bobby.